This collaborative learning environment is focused on applications of instructional technology at the middle school level. The long-term goal of the project is for teachers to embrace 21st century teaching methods and feel energized and renewed by the possibilities. A more immediate objective is to give teachers a window into the ever-changing world of Web 2.0 educational technology as well as immediately applicable ideas for integrating technology into their classrooms. Unfortunately, many of these avenues will be virtually blocked by school network restrictions, while other deterrents may be the result of limited resources such as planning time and access to technology. However, if just a few teachers find themselves inspired, if the path is well-paved, enjoyable, and easy to travel, perhaps they will visit regularly, and maybe even invite a colleague.
My Inspiration
Although I haven't found an SSLE exactly like what I envision for mine, there are a few sites, mostly blogs, that have inspired me:
Jane Heller's Confessions of a She-Fan because she's funny, she's a Yankee fan, and I like the way she uses images
Mindi Stevens' Brevity is the Soul of Wit because she keeps it short, sweet, and to the point... plus she's a baseball fan
Julie Lindsay's Flat Classroom Project Ning because of the extensive global classroom connections established
Vicki Davis's Cool Cat Teacher Blog because of her energy, enthusiasm, and skilled use of Web 2.0 tools
I will aspire to incorporate a little of what I admire most about each site into my own SSLE.
Building an Audience
My students are my most important, albeit captive, audience. My classroom blog, Beyond Keyboarding, presents a vehicle for a line of communication directly between me and my students about our class projects and activities. It's important for this blog to be at the forefront of the learning environment because it allows my students to begin finding, developing, and projecting their collective, if not individual, digital voice. The energy that is brewing beneath this blog is exciting to me, and, I believe, my students as well. It is the spark that hopefully will lead to a parallel level of engagement by my colleagues.
It has been a challenge to engage my colleagues, so I have targeted just a few individuals to share my CLE with at this time, starting with my school's Instructional Technology Specialist. We have what I believe to be a potentially powerful partnership because as the "Keyboarding" teacher, I have access to students and technology on a daily basis, while she has access to teachers on a daily basis. At this time, she is my most critical audience participant, and she is observing with keen interest. We are beginning to share some ideas for engaging teachers, but truly, teacher involvement is her responsibility and area of expertise. Student involvement is my forte, and I believe that if I lead the way with student involvement, teachers will follow. Based on the visitor locations on my ClustrMap, educators from around the world are beginning to follow. In other words, if I build it, they will come, and this is my Field of Dreams.
I designed Above and Beyond primarily for teachers to discuss or share behind-the-scenes ideas about classroom projects and activities. I anticipate promoting Above and Beyond with other bloggers on Classroom 2.0 in order to get the ball rolling and hopefully connect with some other classrooms.
Facing the Challenges
Engaging colleagues has been a challenge for a number of reasons, including but not limited to the following:
Interest: Some are simply not interested.
Pressure: Some are vehemently opposed to and resentful of the perceived pressure to do one more thing and take on one more responsibility.
Fear: Some truly fear technology and are literally afraid to touch the keyboard.
Planning Time: We are lacking in common face-to-face planning time, which is important for establishing a level of comfort with the tools.
Network Restrictions: Many of the tools are blocked, including Pageflakes, Netvibes, Nings, Wordpress, Flickr, and YouTube.
Learning Curve: There is a considerable learning curve involved in incorporating technology into daily plans and activities.
Access to Technology: Limited and shared resources make regular access to the technology difficult.
Student Competencies: Not all students have the technology skills necessary to participate in a planned technology project.
Curriculum Requirements: Mandated pacing guides, scheduled test dates, grade-level lesson plans, and SOLs control instructional time.
Technical Difficulties: Networks crash, batteries die, machines act flaky, files vanish, links get broken, etc.
When viewed all together, they seem like impossible challenges to overcome, but with vision, planning, persistence, collaboration, and patience, these challenges can all be overcome.
Overcoming the Challenges
Interest: Items of high-level interest, such as Smartboard activities, will be included.
Pressure: Participation is voluntary.
Fear: Familiar tools, such as search boxes and links to interactive websites, are included.
Planning Time: Optional workshops are planned after school in collaboration with my Technology Integration Specialist.
Network Restrictions: The environment will be hosted by EduBlogs, which is accessible from school as well as home.
Learning Curve: Activities that are easily implemented and readily available, such as online tutorials, are included.
Access to Technology: Many resources and activities can be used with a Smartboard, which many teachers have access to.
Student Competencies: My "Keyboarding" class addresses student technology competencies, as do the online tutorials.
Technical Difficulties: This one, we're just gonna have to roll with.
Ideally, once these challenges are addressed, visitors will visit regularly and begin to participate by sharing ideas and creating blogs, delicious accounts, and/or class wikis to share.
Content
The SSLE will consist of two blogs, a wiki, and website, all designed to model and implement activities for infusing technology throughout the middle school curriculum.
The Above and Beyond blog will contain ideas for and reflections of classroom activities and project. Teachers will learn how to use technology to immediately engage their students and infuse technology with their curriculum, whether it's language arts, history, math, science, social studies, or a foreign language. A blog is a good forum because it allows for the sharing of ideas.
The Beyond Keyboarding blog contains actual projects and activities for students to engage with. Students will be able to practice and apply skills from across the middle school curriculum. The blog will also allow students to develop a digital voice and begin making some global connections.
The Beyond Keyboarding wiki will contain a showcase of student work. Teachers and parents will be able to see actual projects that students have created using technology, and it will save paper, ink, and wear-and-tear on the library printer.
My Beyond Keyboarding Classroom site contains daily classroom activities, online tutorials, and resources, and teachers will be able to see how I've structured my classroom. They will also be able to access the instructional materials I use to teach my lessons.
Copyright issues shouldn't be a concern, as all images, audio, and video recordings are my own, and all published student work will be with parental permission.
Format
I've decided to use Pageflakes as the start page for this project, although I will most likely drop it after this class is over and lead with Above and Beyond because it points to the other sites.
Pageflakes is used as the main portal. The start page contains a video tour of the SSLE, a checklist of things to do to explore the site, and a message board, The remaining pages each contain one of the four main components of the SSLE and a corresponding message board for feedback. The student blog contains posts and pages with threaded comments, video tutorials, and some audio components; The teacher blog contains the same tools as the student blog, plus a page containing news feeds, a link to my Delicious account, and a Flickr slideshow of images that will be used for a geography challenge activity; the wiki will contain work directly contributed by students; and a classroom website contains classroom activities and corresponding video tutorials.
I'm using blogs because they are easy to create, maintain, and use to connect with others. The wiki is the best choice for highlighting student work because I can teach the kids to upload their works themselves, and I don't have to print their work to publicize it.
The SSLE has the ability to upload images, videos, and podcasts to share student work and video tutorials. It can also function to host discussions to engage in dialogue with colleagues. It will also allow me to pull RSS feeds so I and my audience can stay informed about best practices in instructional technology and connect to industry professionals and leaders.
I am using EduBlogs to host my blogs and Wikispaces to host the wiki. I use Dreamweaver to manage my classroom website and Hostmonster to host the website and store my tutorials and resources. I use a host of Web 2.0 tools including Delicious for bookmarking, Diigo for posting news items to blog posts, Bloglines to pull news feeds, feed2js to convert feeds to javascript for customizing news feeds, and Flickr to organize and store images. I use Captivate, sometimes Jing, and a Smartboard video capture tool to create my video tutorials, and I use Windows XP tools and applications in the classroom to create images of student work and Vista tools at home.
Evaluate & Refine
How well are the small pieces loosely joined to meet the learning goals?
Actually, I don’t like the way the pieces are joined with Pageflakes at all. As Frances had indicated in her review, Pageflakes takes too long to load, sometimes the flakes are blank and the page must be refreshed, and the layouts aren’t flexible enough. I chose Pageflakes instead of NetVibes because I could access Pageflakes from my school network, but not NetVibes. I think I would be better off using the Above and Beyond teacher blog as the start page.
What types of changes did you make to your LE?
I initially thought that copyright concerns wouldn’t be an issue, because I was developing a lot of my own content, but I quickly realized that I was sort of defeating the purpose of Web 2.0 if I was going to close down all those resources. So I began examining and navigating copyright issues so that I could include open source audio, video, and image files.
How might you improve on future versions of the SSLE?
I’m hoping to spend the summer working on that. I decided to accept an invitation to participate in the Northern Virginia Writing Project, and I expect to work on developing this SSLE as the basis for my writing project. One thing I would like to focus on, however, is targeting specific content area learning objectives across the curriculum and developing a more organized structure for resources and activities related to those objectives.
Above and Beyond Keyboarding
Design Idea
This collaborative learning environment is focused on applications of instructional technology at the middle school level. The long-term goal of the project is for teachers to embrace 21st century teaching methods and feel energized and renewed by the possibilities. A more immediate objective is to give teachers a window into the ever-changing world of Web 2.0 educational technology as well as immediately applicable ideas for integrating technology into their classrooms. Unfortunately, many of these avenues will be virtually blocked by school network restrictions, while other deterrents may be the result of limited resources such as planning time and access to technology. However, if just a few teachers find themselves inspired, if the path is well-paved, enjoyable, and easy to travel, perhaps they will visit regularly, and maybe even invite a colleague.
My Inspiration
Although I haven't found an SSLE exactly like what I envision for mine, there are a few sites, mostly blogs, that have inspired me:
I will aspire to incorporate a little of what I admire most about each site into my own SSLE.
Building an Audience
My students are my most important, albeit captive, audience. My classroom blog, Beyond Keyboarding, presents a vehicle for a line of communication directly between me and my students about our class projects and activities. It's important for this blog to be at the forefront of the learning environment because it allows my students to begin finding, developing, and projecting their collective, if not individual, digital voice. The energy that is brewing beneath this blog is exciting to me, and, I believe, my students as well. It is the spark that hopefully will lead to a parallel level of engagement by my colleagues.
It has been a challenge to engage my colleagues, so I have targeted just a few individuals to share my CLE with at this time, starting with my school's Instructional Technology Specialist. We have what I believe to be a potentially powerful partnership because as the "Keyboarding" teacher, I have access to students and technology on a daily basis, while she has access to teachers on a daily basis. At this time, she is my most critical audience participant, and she is observing with keen interest. We are beginning to share some ideas for engaging teachers, but truly, teacher involvement is her responsibility and area of expertise. Student involvement is my forte, and I believe that if I lead the way with student involvement, teachers will follow. Based on the visitor locations on my ClustrMap, educators from around the world are beginning to follow. In other words, if I build it, they will come, and this is my Field of Dreams.
I designed Above and Beyond primarily for teachers to discuss or share behind-the-scenes ideas about classroom projects and activities. I anticipate promoting Above and Beyond with other bloggers on Classroom 2.0 in order to get the ball rolling and hopefully connect with some other classrooms.
Facing the Challenges
Engaging colleagues has been a challenge for a number of reasons, including but not limited to the following:
When viewed all together, they seem like impossible challenges to overcome, but with vision, planning, persistence, collaboration, and patience, these challenges can all be overcome.
Overcoming the Challenges
Ideally, once these challenges are addressed, visitors will visit regularly and begin to participate by sharing ideas and creating blogs, delicious accounts, and/or class wikis to share.
Content
The SSLE will consist of two blogs, a wiki, and website, all designed to model and implement activities for infusing technology throughout the middle school curriculum.
Copyright issues shouldn't be a concern, as all images, audio, and video recordings are my own, and all published student work will be with parental permission.
Format
I've decided to use Pageflakes as the start page for this project, although I will most likely drop it after this class is over and lead with Above and Beyond because it points to the other sites.
Evaluate & Refine
How well are the small pieces loosely joined to meet the learning goals?
What types of changes did you make to your LE?
How might you improve on future versions of the SSLE?